Tag: heal

We have been told for decades by authorities that food has nothing to do with healing. In fact, only in the very recent past has modern medicine started to discuss foods as a way to prevent illness. In the last five to ten years conventional medical experts have started talking about the healing benefits of foods more than ever, as if this was wisdom they knew all along. It might seem like this would be a positive shift in the health field, but unfortunately this trend has resulted in some of the most healing foods, such as fruits, being unfairly attacked by the newest experts. Because of this trend, it’s critical that you err on the side of caution so you are not fooled by this recent development of trendy misinformation. It’s important to remember that it’s the doctors and experts in alternative health that have known for a very long time that foods heal the body and they were ridiculed for it. Still, both conventional and alternative health communities have yet to fully understand the power of foods that can actually reverse and heal diseases that have plagued people for decades.

The foods in this article are so powerful, and scientific research knows almost nothing about them. Science and research have not even scratched the surface of what is in foods and are years away from discovering what is in a wild blueberry, for example, or any other healing food. Funding simply does not get devoted to researching truly healing foods.

Are you chronically overweight, do you have high cholesterol levels that statins don’t help, unexplained hair loss, short or nonexistent eye brows, chronic tendinitis, or autoimmune system problems, then you have a sensitive or disturbed thyroid. The true cause of thyroid disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, Grave’s disease, and almost all other thyroid conditions and symptoms is the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). Medical science and research have not yet done the research of this truth. EBV is not just a trigger for people who are already dealing with a chronic illness or even a thyroid condition as some health professionals believe. A trigger is not a true cause. That is a lazy mistake. The virus is the true cause. This is a subtle but serious critical difference in knowledge that’s essential to understand.

It is crucial to understand that EBV is the true cause of thyroid problems so you can begin including the foods that fight this virus and support the thyroid. Knowing the cause can change everything when it comes to healing. There are many people who call themselves autoimmune experts who suggest one diet or another these days. While it may be easy to follow these trendy diets, we must ask ourselves whether it is even possible for these medical experts to recommend which foods to avoid and which foods to include when they do not even know what causes thyroid disease and other thyroid conditions and symptoms in the first place. These experts tell us that thyroid conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is our immune system attacking our own body. This is reckless, outdated information that does not help someone heal. Furthermore, scientific research knows very little about what is in foods and what foods can do. These two things puts their credibility in question. We have to be the ones to become experts. It’s critical for our own health and the health of our loved ones.

Many of the foods discussed here are controversial and may seem contradictory to other information you have heard elsewhere. This is again because most of the thyroid information that is available today is outdated and inaccurate. It can take 10 or more years for new medical information to filter down to some of the medical community.

Brassica/Cruciferous Family

The first food is actually a group of foods called cruciferous vegetables, which include kale, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, broccoli raab, arugula, and cabbage. You may have heard that cruciferous vegetables, also known as brassicas, are harmful for anyone with a thyroid problem. This is an example of misinformation that becomes trendy and is shared widely despite it not being accurate. And it is even harmful because these foods are some of the most powerful healers for anyone with a thyroid condition or symptom. The mistaken theory suggests that the goitrogenic compounds contained in these foods are harmful to the thyroid. However, it is impossible to consume enough cruciferous vegetables for them to become dangerous for your thyroid. In truth, even if you eat a barrel full of cauliflower, you will still be safe. The reason is due to something currently undiscovered within these foods called anti-goitrogenic compounds. These same vegetables that contain the goitrogenic compounds contain equal amounts of compounds that cancel out the goitrogenic ones. Therefore, there should be no fear when consuming these delicious healing vegetables, whether raw or cooked.

Actually, if someone avoids them due to this misinformation, they are truly missing out on what these foods have to offer. There are phytochemical compounds in kale, brussels sprouts, and all these vegetables that do so much to heal your thyroid that you would be cheating yourself if you decided to avoid them “just to be safe.” The phytochemical compounds literally push the virus out of the thyroid and destroy it. Since it is a pathogen we are going after when trying to heal thyroid issues, it is critical to understand the healing properties the brassicas possess and incorporate them into your diet. Some broccoli and cauliflower are not going to hurt you; they will help you.

Artichokes

Look at an artichoke to visualize just how strong and protective this food is for the thyroid. You see the layered leaves on the outside, the tips of which are spiked and sharp. The leaves are thick and hearty on the outer layer and become thinner and denser as they reach the center of the vegetable. At the center lies the heart, which the entire leaf system is safeguarding and supporting. In the same way, the majestic artichoke can protect your thyroid, making it the most powerful food for thyroid healing.

There are so many undiscovered compounds in artichokes that work for your thyroid, including subgroups of phytochemicals that shrink nodules, tumors, and cysts. There are undiscovered antioxidants and amino acids, which hopefully science will begin to see 30 years down the road. Artichokes also protect your thyroid from invaders, such as the pathogen you now know to be the true cause of thyroid disease.

When consuming artichokes, fresh is always best. If you purchase canned, bottled, or even frozen artichoke hearts, citric acid is often an additive, which can be harmful to your health in different ways and should be avoided. But the artichoke hearts will still help heal the thyroid, regardless of the citric acid. If for some reason you are unable to get fresh artichokes, soak your canned, bottled, or frozen artichoke hearts overnight in water with a pinch of sea salt. The next day, rinse them well and almost all of the citric acid will be gone. If you steam your artichokes, you may also add a pinch of sea salt to this water, too.

Atlantic Sea Vegetables

Sea vegetables are another food group that tends to ruffle some feathers, typically due to the high iodine content. There is a commonly held belief that anyone with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis should avoid sea vegetables and iodine altogether. This is based on a current trend that’s focused on the idea that iodine creates inflammation of the thyroid. However, the people recommending to stay away from foods like dulse and kelp are the same people who do not know what causes thyroid disease in the first place. Therefore, would it even be possible to understand whether iodine is harmful or not? Atlantic sea vegetables are not among the foods to avoid, and here is why.

Atlantic sea vegetables, especially dulse and kelp do, in truth, contain elevated amounts of iodine, but this is helpful. Iodine acts as an antiseptic for the thyroid. It is a disinfectant and cleans the thyroid out of any viruses, such as Epstein-Barr virus, the very pathogen we are targeting when wanting to heal from Hashimoto’s, Grave’s, or any of the other various thyroid issues that are so prominent today. Iodine deficiency today is very different to the kind we faced in the past. Years ago, we were deficient in iodine due to the new cultivation process of grains, which was stripping grains down so that they became a very different food than they were before. These days, many organic farmers are aware of iodine deficiencies in the soil, and so they cleverly use seaweed fertilizers to enrich the growing process with iodine. This, though, is not enough. We require more iodine than we ever did before,because of the vast amount of people struggling to fight viruses in their thyroid. This is why it’s so important to include sea vegetables in your diet. Dulse and kelp help you protect your thyroid if it’s under attack from EBV, which is very common for many people, and support healing in powerful ways. The iodine in sea vegetables also protects the thyroid from radiation and helps to prevent thyroid cancer and other cancers.

If you are afraid of the iodine in sea vegetables and are having a hard time letting go of the idea that they are bad for you, try just including a little bit of Atlantic dulse in your diet here and there. Just start off small. Sprinkle a teaspoon of dulse flakes on your salad once a week. Stir a strip of Atlantic kelp into your soup for dinner. Try to get small amounts of it in as you learn to trust that iodine is helpful, not harmful.

My recommendation is to opt for the sea vegetables from the east coast, from the Atlantic Ocean. The Pacific Ocean is too polluted for us to be regularly consuming vegetables from its waters. The dulse and kelp that come from Maine are the best ones to eat. These are powerful foods that can bring you so much healing.

Be sure not to confuse the iodine in sea vegetables with the bottles of topical iodine from the pharmacy. Topical iodine is not to be consumed orally.

Bananas

While bananas may seem like a common fruit, they actually contain powerful properties to help you heal from your thyroid disease, conditions, and symptoms. Bananas help restore neurotransmitters and support healing from neurological problems, which are among the symptoms related to thyroid problems. Neurotoxins from viruses like EBV can creep into your body and cause symptoms like brain fog, memory loss, fatigue, restless legs syndrome, insomnia, tremors, tingles and numbness, headaches, tinnitus, anxiety, depression, and many more. This fruit is an anti-inflammatory, anti-EBV food that can greatly help you in healing from and preventing thyroid conditions and symptoms. Bananas are also good for hypoglycemia because they balance blood sugar and protect adrenals. Additionally, they knock out streptococcus, which unknown to medical science and research is the bacteria responsible for SIBO, from the intestinal tract. Streptococcus is a cofactor for Epstein-Barr Virus.

There is a current trend that started approximately 11 years ago that warns people to not eat bananas. The common thought is that bananas have too much sugar, which often leads people to believe that the sugar in bananas is the same as the sugar in a donut. This could not be further from the truth. The sugar contained in bananas, and in all fruits, is glucose that our brain requires on a daily basis.

The panic about bananas is completely unfounded, especially because science has yet to even discover what is in a banana. Once medical research came across potassium, they stopped any further inquiry simply because there is no money is banana research. What is not talked about is that bananas are very rich in calcium because they require calcium-rich soil to grow. The calcium in bananas is very important for the central nervous system. Furthermore, we need calcium from fruits, leafy greens, and vegetables in the diet when there are nodules in the thyroid. Nodules deplete our systems of any calcium that we already have, making us deficient in this necessary nutrient. Bananas are excellent at preventing calcium deficiency.

Many people are accustomed to eating bananas when they are still fairly green. Others have been told to eat them when they’re completely green and hard as a rock by recent experts who fear fruit and don’t understand what they’re recommending. They try to back up their recommendations with biased studies that are anti-fruit, which puts people into fruit fear. This is another colossal, trendy blunder that’s slowing down the healing process in chronic illness. When bananas are in this state, they are unripe and can actually be quite difficult to digest and assimilate all the nutrients you are trying to acquire from the banana in the first place. Allow your bananas to ripen until there is no visible green, they are slightly soft to the touch, and there are even some brown spots. You also don’t want them too overripe. The best time to eat them is when they are lightly speckled with brown spots, but haven’t turned mostly brown. When fruits are ripe, they will become much sweeter because the sugar has matured and the nutrients will be their most bioavailable at this point. Their sugars will also most effectively hold and suspend the most important nutrients for reversing and preventing disease.

I encourage you to incorporate as many bananas as you want to in your diet because they are such an amazing gift to us for healing and nourishment. Even if you do not have a thyroid condition or symptom, bananas can be an amazing staple, especially because they are commonly affordable and available year-round in most places in the world. Every time you go to the store, add a few bunches to your cart. Keep several bunches of bananas on your kitchen counter at all times. Freeze them when you have a lot of ripe ones so they are ready to throw into smoothies or to make banana ice cream. You can even eat four or five at a time and experience how satisfied they make you feel when they are properly ripened. If you eat them with a few stalks of celery, you will have an especially nourishing, balancing, and restorative meal or snack.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers are another important food to include because they strengthen the adrenals and the kidneys while flushing toxins created by viruses from the bloodstream. Cucumbers also hydrate the lymphatic system. Our lymphatic system can be found at various places around our body, but some of the most important lymph nodes are the ones that surround the thyroid in the neck. We want to protect this part of our lymphatic system because of its close proximity to the thyroid.

People who are too sick to exercise will benefit greatly from increasing their consumption of cucumbers. This healing food will support your lymphatic system in lieu of the exercise you are not quite ready for.

Garlic

Garlic is an incredible food for thyroid healing because it essentially acts like an anti-viral bomb that can do wonders for eliminating EBV from your system. It also kills off streptococcus, which, as I mentioned above, is a cofactor of EBV. Strep is connected to UTIs, sinus infections, SIBO, acne, and many more symptoms. Garlic has a fantastic way of getting deep into the throat to fight off bugs in the lymph system and thyroid.

Some people stay away from garlic because they either believe it is unhealthy, or they simply cannot handle the strength of the flavor. Garlic is not an unhealthy food. It is very good for you because of its antiviral compounds. If it is the flavor that is keeping you away from garlic, try to eat scallions and onions instead because they contain similar properties.

I want to inspire you to include both raw and cooked garlic into your meals and to get creative with it! There is no need to burn your throat by eating too much, but try to get garlic in any way you can. Make guacamole with a couple cloves of raw garlic mixed in. Instead of adding one clove of garlic to your vegetable soup, add four. Mince or press a clove of garlic for your savory salad or add it it your salad dressing. You can even rub a piece of raw garlic on a baked sweet potato. Also, I recommend investing in a simple, inexpensive garlic press. This will make it much easier to consume garlic regularly because sometimes mincing garlic with a knife can be a bit tedious.

Celery

Celery is one of the most amazing foods given to us to heal from thyroid issues because of its long list of healing properties, most of which are unknown to science and research. Celery strengthens hydrochloric acid in the intestinal tract, helps the liver produce bile to break down food, and stabilizes the adrenals. Celery provides special undiscovered subgroups of mineral salts that attack the virus that causes Hashimoto’s. Celery also contains powerful electrolytes for the nervous system and boosts T3, a hormone in the thyroid. Find out more of the unknown healing properties of celery in Thyroid Healing. If celery doesn’t taste good to you, try chopping it up very small and adding it to your salad. Add a stick or two to your next smoothie. Juice it and drink it alone, or juice it with some cucumber, an apple, or pineapple if you need help with the flavor. This is another important food to include and find creative ways of getting into your meals.

Asparagus

At the moment, scientific research does not know much about what is contained inside an asparagus, but they are beginning to tap into some new chemical compounds. What research does not know is that asparagus supports the thyroid and is one of its most enthusiastic and powerful advocates. Think of asparagus as your friend or family member that consistently has your back and is your constant support. There are phytochemicals in the skin and in the tips of asparagus that push back invaders, whether those invaders are chemical or viral. Asparagus also has an alkaloid that acts as a gentle aspirin throughout the body, calming down the body and lowering inflammation. As opposed to over-the-counter aspirin, this quality in asparagus does not thin the blood or create havoc in the stomach. There are so many ways to consume asparagus. To start, you can try juicing it raw, adding it to raw to salads, or eating it lightly steamed.

Radishes

Radishes are one of those vegetables that, because they have a bite to them, are often neglected. However, they are wonderful to include if you want to heal your thyroid. Radishes are an antiviral food due to their high and unique sulfur content. The sulfur contained in radishes is unlike that of any other vegetable because it specifically kills pathogens throughout the body. This is one of the ultimate foods for Hashimoto’s or any kind of thyroid problem because of its unique ability to kill off EBV, which is exactly what you want to do throughout your healing process. The sulfur compound acts like a smoke screen, saturating the thyroid and removing pathogens. Another quality of radishes is that they can prevent and stop thyroid atrophy. When the thyroid is infected, it can often atrophy due to its lack of use, which gives you just one more reason to include radishes on top of salads and to eat as snacks. While the variety of radish most people are familiar with is quite spicy, there are so many other varieties to try that are either milder or even spicier. Watermelon radishes and grapes radishes are beautiful choices to be found at local farmers markets and health food stores and are more mild. There are even black radishes that have a strong but delicious bite. These varieties will change everything you know about radishes and are fun to add to dishes and try with your family.

Potatoes

Potatoes are another controversial food because they have been mistakenly labeled as a white food. Even though potatoes are white on the inside, they are not a white food. Radishes, bananas, jicama, and cultivated blueberries are all white on the inside with a different color skin, and yet they are not considered white foods. Potatoes have gold skin, red skin, brown skin, and even purple skin. There are so many varieties of potatoes available to us that are healthful to include in our diet, especially if we want to fight the virus that causes thyroid problems. Potatoes, contrary to popular belief, are not devoid of nutrition. Rather, they are full of it! They have very high amounts of L lysine and tyrosine. The humble potato is one of the ultimate EBV killers and is wonderful to include in your diet despite it being under attack by many diet trends today. These diets and the experts behind them don’t understand thyroid illness or any other chronic illness. By shunning the potato because it goes against their own personal food beliefs they are taking away an opportunity to receive the healing benefits from a fantastic food you may need for no reason.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are amazing for the thyroid because they contain their very own variety of vitamin C. Researchers are currently unaware that there are multiple types of vitamin C in fruit. This vitamin C in tomato is created through the moonlight frequency that is absorbed when the tomato is growing outdoors. This special vitamin C supports the thyroid like no other kind by keeping it balanced. Tomato has always been scrutinized because it’s classed as a nightshade. The new trend of the day suggests we should remove seeds from the tomato, which isn’t helpful. This trend stems once again from well-meaning experts who don’t know what causes thyroid and chronic illnesses in the first place. They are offering food advice based on outdated studies that have a “thumb on the scale” that have influenced their outcomes, which in turn can hinder healing.

Barley Grass Juice Extract Powder

This powerful supplement pulls out mercury and heavy metals, which feed the virus you are trying to get rid of when healing from thyroid conditions and symptoms. Barley grass juice extract powder also has alkaloids that feed the thyroid, which in turn prevents the thyroid from atrophying.

Try to have fun with the different foods and find new ways to incorporate these healing, powerful fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, herbs, and supplements into your daily life. When you feed yourself with the foods that fight EBV and support thyroid health and other chronic illnesses, you are giving your body the best support you can and healing can happen.

In a world obsessed with speed and rife with distractions, there are few things that feel better than sitting still, paying attention — and going nowhere. A celebrated travel writer explains how to get there.

When I was 29, I had the life I always dreamed of as a boy: a 25th-floor office in Midtown Manhattan, an apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street, and an endlessly fascinating job. Writing for Time magazine, I covered the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the People Power Revolution of the Philippines, and the turmoil around Indira Gandhi’s assassination. With no dependents or domestic responsibilities, I took long vacations, traveling everywhere from El Salvador to Bali.

In the midst of all the daily excitement and accomplishment, however, was a voice inside telling me that I was racing around too fast to really see or enjoy where I was going — or to check whether I was truly happy.

Indeed, hurrying around in search of contentment seemed a perfect way of guaranteeing I’d never find it. Too often, I reminded myself of someone going on and on about world peace in the most contentious and divisive terms.

So I decided to leave my dream life and spend a year in a small, single room on the backstreets of the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto. At the time I couldn’t have explained exactly why I was doing this, except that I felt I had enjoyed a wonderful diet of movement and stimulation in New York, and it was time to balance that with something simpler. It was time to learn how to make these joys less external and ephemeral and to learn the art of sitting still.

Going nowhere — as my boyhood hero, singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, would later tell me — isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so you can see it more clearly and love it more deeply. These four practices can help you experience more quiet in your daily life, no matter where you are.

BE FOR REAL

One day — 4 in the morning at the end of December, to be exact — Cohen took time out from his meditations to meet me for an interview and talk about what he was doing at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles.

Sitting still, he said with unexpected passion, was “the real deep entertainment” he had found in his 61 years on the planet. “Real profound and voluptuous and delicious entertainment. The real feast that is available within this activity.”

Was he kidding? Cohen is famous for his mischief and ironies. But as he went on, I realized he wasn’t joking.

“What else would I be doing?” he asked. “Would I be starting a new marriage with a young woman and raising another family? Finding new drugs, buying more expensive wine? I don’t know. This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence.”

As I observed the sense of attention, kindness, and even delight that seemed to come out of Cohen’s life of going nowhere, I began to think about how liberating it might be for any of us to practice sitting still — clearing our heads and quieting our emotions.

You could start just by taking a few minutes out of every day to sit quietly and do nothing, letting what moves you rise to the surface. You could enjoy a long walk in the wilderness, or take a few days out of every season to go on retreat, exploring what lies deeper within the moment or yourself.

You could, as Cohen was doing, try to find a life in which stage sets and performances disappear and be reminded, at a level deeper than all words, about how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions.

TAKE THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

The idea of going nowhere is as universal as the law of gravity. “All the unhappiness of men,” the 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal famously noted, “arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”

After Admiral Richard E. Byrd spent nearly five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic, in temperatures that sank to 70 degrees below zero, he emerged convinced that “half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

Or, as they sometimes say around Kyoto, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

Yet the world in which Pascal and even Admiral Byrd lived seems positively tranquil by today’s standards. The amount of data humanity collects while you’re reading a book is five times greater than the amount that exists in the entire Library of Congress. Anyone reading my full book, The Art of Stillness, will take in as much information today as Shakespeare took in during his lifetime. Researchers in the field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from a phone call. Yet such interruptions come every 11 minutes, on average — which means we’re never caught up with our lives.

So the more data that comes streaming in on us, the less time we have to process any of it.

The one thing technology doesn’t provide is a sense of how to make the best use of it. The ability to gather information, which used to be so crucial, is far less important now than the ability to sift through it.

It’s easy to feel as if you’re standing 2 inches away from a huge canvas that’s crowded and changing every microsecond. It’s only by stepping back and standing still that you can begin to take in the larger picture and see what that canvas — which is your life — really means.

UNPLUG AND RECHARGE

I’ve always been surprised to find that the people who have worked to speed up the world are often the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down.

One day I visited Library of Congress headquarters to give a talk on the Dalai Lama book I’d written and, like most visitors, I was impressed by the trampolines, the indoor tree houses, and the freedom that workers had to let their minds wander off leash to wherever inspiration might be hiding.

Many Silicon Valley employees observe an Internet Sabbath every week, turning off most of their devices from Friday night to Monday morning, if only to regain the sense of proportion and direction they’ll need when they go back online.

There is now a meditation room in every building on the General Mills campus in Minneapolis. Congressman Tim Ryan leads his colleagues in sessions of sitting still, reminding them that, if nothing else, scientists have found that meditation can lower blood pressure, help boost our immune systems, and even change the architecture of our brains.

A growing percentage of American companies now have stress-reduction programs, and the number is increasing by the day. More than 30 percent of those enrolled in such a program at Aetna, the giant healthcare company, saw their stress levels drop by a third after only an hour of yoga each week.

The computer-chip maker Intel experimented with a quiet period of four hours every Tuesday, during which 300 engineers and managers were asked to turn off their email and phones and put up Do Not Disturb signs on their office doors to make space for “thinking time.” The response proved so enthusiastic that the company inaugurated an eight-week program to encourage clearer thinking.

After a similar seven-week program at General Mills, 80 percent of senior executives reported an improvement in their ability to make decisions, and 89 percent said they had become better listeners. Such developments are saving American corporations $300 billion a year; more important, they’re a form of preemptive medicine at a time when the World Health Organization has projected that “stress will be the health epidemic of the 21st century.”

It may be strange to see mind training — going nowhere, in effect — being embraced by forward-pushing organizations. And it’s true, the businesses that view mindfulness practices as opportunities for advancing their goals may simply be deploying new and imaginative means to the same un-elevated ends: searching for ways to squeeze ever more productivity from their employees.

To me, the point of sitting still is to help you see through the very idea of pushing forward; it leads you to a place where you’re defined by something larger. Its benefits lie within some psychological account with a high interest rate but long-term yields, to be drawn upon at the moment when a doctor walks into the room shaking his head, or another car veers in front of yours, and all you have to draw upon is the clarity and focus you’ve collected in your deeper moments.

KEEP THE SABBATH

The one word for which the adjective “holy” is used in the Ten Commandments is “Sabbath.” But keeping the Sabbath — doing nothing for a while — is one of the hardest things in life for me. I’d much rather give up meat or wine or sex than the option of checking my emails or getting on with my work when I want to. If I don’t answer my messages today, I tell myself, there will only be more to answer tomorrow (though, in truth, refraining from sending messages will likely diminish the number I receive). If I take time off, I somehow believe, I’ll be that much more hurried when I return to work.

Whenever I finally force myself away from my desk for a day, of course, I find the opposite: The more time I spend away from my work, the better the work will be.

One day, Mahatma Gandhi was said to have woken up and told those around him, “This is going to be a very busy day. I won’t be able to meditate for an hour.” His friends were taken aback at this rare break from his discipline. “I’ll have to meditate for two,” he explained.

I mentioned this once on a radio program and a woman called in, understandably impatient. “It’s all very well for a male travel writer in Santa Barbara to talk about taking time off,” she said. “But what about me? I’m a mother trying to start a small business, and I don’t have the luxury of meditating for two hours a day.”

Yet it’s precisely those who are busiest, I wanted to tell her, who most need to give themselves a break. Stress is contagious. If the overburdened mother could ask her spouse — or her mother or a friend — to look after her kids for 30 minutes a day, I’m sure she’d be more relaxed and have more energy and joy to share with her children (and with her business) when she came back.

Space, as Karl Marx explained it in another context, has been annihilated by time. This is especially true today. We feel as though we can connect with anyone, almost anywhere, at any moment. And the more we contact others, the more it seems we lose contact with ourselves.

When I left New York City for the backstreets of Kyoto, I figured I’d be growing poorer in terms of money, amusements, social life, and obvious prospects, but I’d be richer in what I prize most: days and hours.

This is what the principle of the Sabbath enshrines. It is, as the great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, “a cathedral in time rather than in space.”

The one day a week we take off becomes a vast empty space through which we can wander, without agenda. It’s like a retreat house that ensures we’ll have something bright and purposeful to carry back into the other six days. The Sabbath reminds us that, in the end, all our journeys have to bring us home.

It takes courage, of course, to step out of the fray, just as it takes courage to do anything that’s necessary, whether it’s turning away from that sugarcoated doughnut or tending to a loved one on her deathbed. And with billions of our global neighbors in crying need, with so much in every life that has to be done, it can sound selfish to take a break or go off to a quiet place. But as soon as you sit still, you find that it actually brings you closer to others, in both understanding and sympathy.

In any case, few of us have the chance to step out of our daily lives often, or for very long. Nowhere can become somewhere we visit in the quiet corners of our lives by just sitting quietly for 30 minutes every morning (a mere 3 percent of our waking hours). The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion and commotion of the world.

Because, in an age of speed, nothing can be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And, in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.

In a world obsessed with speed and rife with distractions, there are few things that feel better than sitting still, paying attention — and going nowhere. A celebrated travel writer explains how to get there.

When I was 29, I had the life I always dreamed of as a boy: a 25th-floor office in Midtown Manhattan, an apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street, and an endlessly fascinating job. Writing for Time magazine, I covered the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the People Power Revolution of the Philippines, and the turmoil around Indira Gandhi’s assassination. With no dependents or domestic responsibilities, I took long vacations, traveling everywhere from El Salvador to Bali.

In the midst of all the daily excitement and accomplishment, however, was a voice inside telling me that I was racing around too fast to really see or enjoy where I was going — or to check whether I was truly happy.

Indeed, hurrying around in search of contentment seemed a perfect way of guaranteeing I’d never find it. Too often, I reminded myself of someone going on and on about world peace in the most contentious and divisive terms.

So I decided to leave my dream life and spend a year in a small, single room on the backstreets of the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto. At the time I couldn’t have explained exactly why I was doing this, except that I felt I had enjoyed a wonderful diet of movement and stimulation in New York, and it was time to balance that with something simpler. It was time to learn how to make these joys less external and ephemeral and to learn the art of sitting still.

Going nowhere — as my boyhood hero, singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, would later tell me — isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so you can see it more clearly and love it more deeply. These four practices can help you experience more quiet in your daily life, no matter where you are.

BE FOR REAL

One day — 4 in the morning at the end of December, to be exact — Cohen took time out from his meditations to meet me for an interview and talk about what he was doing at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles.

Sitting still, he said with unexpected passion, was “the real deep entertainment” he had found in his 61 years on the planet. “Real profound and voluptuous and delicious entertainment. The real feast that is available within this activity.”

Was he kidding? Cohen is famous for his mischief and ironies. But as he went on, I realized he wasn’t joking.

“What else would I be doing?” he asked. “Would I be starting a new marriage with a young woman and raising another family? Finding new drugs, buying more expensive wine? I don’t know. This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence.”

As I observed the sense of attention, kindness, and even delight that seemed to come out of Cohen’s life of going nowhere, I began to think about how liberating it might be for any of us to practice sitting still — clearing our heads and quieting our emotions.

You could start just by taking a few minutes out of every day to sit quietly and do nothing, letting what moves you rise to the surface. You could enjoy a long walk in the wilderness, or take a few days out of every season to go on retreat, exploring what lies deeper within the moment or yourself.

You could, as Cohen was doing, try to find a life in which stage sets and performances disappear and be reminded, at a level deeper than all words, about how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions.

TAKE THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

The idea of going nowhere is as universal as the law of gravity. “All the unhappiness of men,” the 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal famously noted, “arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”

After Admiral Richard E. Byrd spent nearly five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic, in temperatures that sank to 70 degrees below zero, he emerged convinced that “half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

Or, as they sometimes say around Kyoto, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

Yet the world in which Pascal and even Admiral Byrd lived seems positively tranquil by today’s standards. The amount of data humanity collects while you’re reading a book is five times greater than the amount that exists in the entire Library of Congress. Anyone reading my full book, The Art of Stillness, will take in as much information today as Shakespeare took in during his lifetime. Researchers in the field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from a phone call. Yet such interruptions come every 11 minutes, on average — which means we’re never caught up with our lives.

So the more data that comes streaming in on us, the less time we have to process any of it.

The one thing technology doesn’t provide is a sense of how to make the best use of it. The ability to gather information, which used to be so crucial, is far less important now than the ability to sift through it.

It’s easy to feel as if you’re standing 2 inches away from a huge canvas that’s crowded and changing every microsecond. It’s only by stepping back and standing still that you can begin to take in the larger picture and see what that canvas — which is your life — really means.

UNPLUG AND RECHARGE

I’ve always been surprised to find that the people who have worked to speed up the world are often the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down.

One day I visited Library of Congress headquarters to give a talk on the Dalai Lama book I’d written and, like most visitors, I was impressed by the trampolines, the indoor tree houses, and the freedom that workers had to let their minds wander off leash to wherever inspiration might be hiding.

Many Silicon Valley employees observe an Internet Sabbath every week, turning off most of their devices from Friday night to Monday morning, if only to regain the sense of proportion and direction they’ll need when they go back online.

There is now a meditation room in every building on the General Mills campus in Minneapolis. Congressman Tim Ryan leads his colleagues in sessions of sitting still, reminding them that, if nothing else, scientists have found that meditation can lower blood pressure, help boost our immune systems, and even change the architecture of our brains.

A growing percentage of American companies now have stress-reduction programs, and the number is increasing by the day. More than 30 percent of those enrolled in such a program at Aetna, the giant healthcare company, saw their stress levels drop by a third after only an hour of yoga each week.

The computer-chip maker Intel experimented with a quiet period of four hours every Tuesday, during which 300 engineers and managers were asked to turn off their email and phones and put up Do Not Disturb signs on their office doors to make space for “thinking time.” The response proved so enthusiastic that the company inaugurated an eight-week program to encourage clearer thinking.

After a similar seven-week program at General Mills, 80 percent of senior executives reported an improvement in their ability to make decisions, and 89 percent said they had become better listeners. Such developments are saving American corporations $300 billion a year; more important, they’re a form of preemptive medicine at a time when the World Health Organization has projected that “stress will be the health epidemic of the 21st century.”

It may be strange to see mind training — going nowhere, in effect — being embraced by forward-pushing organizations. And it’s true, the businesses that view mindfulness practices as opportunities for advancing their goals may simply be deploying new and imaginative means to the same un-elevated ends: searching for ways to squeeze ever more productivity from their employees.

To me, the point of sitting still is to help you see through the very idea of pushing forward; it leads you to a place where you’re defined by something larger. Its benefits lie within some psychological account with a high interest rate but long-term yields, to be drawn upon at the moment when a doctor walks into the room shaking his head, or another car veers in front of yours, and all you have to draw upon is the clarity and focus you’ve collected in your deeper moments.

KEEP THE SABBATH

The one word for which the adjective “holy” is used in the Ten Commandments is “Sabbath.” But keeping the Sabbath — doing nothing for a while — is one of the hardest things in life for me. I’d much rather give up meat or wine or sex than the option of checking my emails or getting on with my work when I want to. If I don’t answer my messages today, I tell myself, there will only be more to answer tomorrow (though, in truth, refraining from sending messages will likely diminish the number I receive). If I take time off, I somehow believe, I’ll be that much more hurried when I return to work.

Whenever I finally force myself away from my desk for a day, of course, I find the opposite: The more time I spend away from my work, the better the work will be.

One day, Mahatma Gandhi was said to have woken up and told those around him, “This is going to be a very busy day. I won’t be able to meditate for an hour.” His friends were taken aback at this rare break from his discipline. “I’ll have to meditate for two,” he explained.

I mentioned this once on a radio program and a woman called in, understandably impatient. “It’s all very well for a male travel writer in Santa Barbara to talk about taking time off,” she said. “But what about me? I’m a mother trying to start a small business, and I don’t have the luxury of meditating for two hours a day.”

Yet it’s precisely those who are busiest, I wanted to tell her, who most need to give themselves a break. Stress is contagious. If the overburdened mother could ask her spouse — or her mother or a friend — to look after her kids for 30 minutes a day, I’m sure she’d be more relaxed and have more energy and joy to share with her children (and with her business) when she came back.

Space, as Karl Marx explained it in another context, has been annihilated by time. This is especially true today. We feel as though we can connect with anyone, almost anywhere, at any moment. And the more we contact others, the more it seems we lose contact with ourselves.

When I left New York City for the backstreets of Kyoto, I figured I’d be growing poorer in terms of money, amusements, social life, and obvious prospects, but I’d be richer in what I prize most: days and hours.

This is what the principle of the Sabbath enshrines. It is, as the great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, “a cathedral in time rather than in space.”

The one day a week we take off becomes a vast empty space through which we can wander, without agenda. It’s like a retreat house that ensures we’ll have something bright and purposeful to carry back into the other six days. The Sabbath reminds us that, in the end, all our journeys have to bring us home.

It takes courage, of course, to step out of the fray, just as it takes courage to do anything that’s necessary, whether it’s turning away from that sugarcoated doughnut or tending to a loved one on her deathbed. And with billions of our global neighbors in crying need, with so much in every life that has to be done, it can sound selfish to take a break or go off to a quiet place. But as soon as you sit still, you find that it actually brings you closer to others, in both understanding and sympathy.

In any case, few of us have the chance to step out of our daily lives often, or for very long. Nowhere can become somewhere we visit in the quiet corners of our lives by just sitting quietly for 30 minutes every morning (a mere 3 percent of our waking hours). The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion and commotion of the world.

Because, in an age of speed, nothing can be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And, in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.

In a world obsessed with speed and rife with distractions, there are few things that feel better than sitting still, paying attention — and going nowhere. A celebrated travel writer explains how to get there.

When I was 29, I had the life I always dreamed of as a boy: a 25th-floor office in Midtown Manhattan, an apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street, and an endlessly fascinating job. Writing for Time magazine, I covered the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the People Power Revolution of the Philippines, and the turmoil around Indira Gandhi’s assassination. With no dependents or domestic responsibilities, I took long vacations, traveling everywhere from El Salvador to Bali.

In the midst of all the daily excitement and accomplishment, however, was a voice inside telling me that I was racing around too fast to really see or enjoy where I was going — or to check whether I was truly happy.

Indeed, hurrying around in search of contentment seemed a perfect way of guaranteeing I’d never find it. Too often, I reminded myself of someone going on and on about world peace in the most contentious and divisive terms.

So I decided to leave my dream life and spend a year in a small, single room on the backstreets of the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto. At the time I couldn’t have explained exactly why I was doing this, except that I felt I had enjoyed a wonderful diet of movement and stimulation in New York, and it was time to balance that with something simpler. It was time to learn how to make these joys less external and ephemeral and to learn the art of sitting still.

Going nowhere — as my boyhood hero, singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, would later tell me — isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so you can see it more clearly and love it more deeply. These four practices can help you experience more quiet in your daily life, no matter where you are.

BE FOR REAL

One day — 4 in the morning at the end of December, to be exact — Cohen took time out from his meditations to meet me for an interview and talk about what he was doing at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles.

Sitting still, he said with unexpected passion, was “the real deep entertainment” he had found in his 61 years on the planet. “Real profound and voluptuous and delicious entertainment. The real feast that is available within this activity.”

Was he kidding? Cohen is famous for his mischief and ironies. But as he went on, I realized he wasn’t joking.

“What else would I be doing?” he asked. “Would I be starting a new marriage with a young woman and raising another family? Finding new drugs, buying more expensive wine? I don’t know. This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence.”

As I observed the sense of attention, kindness, and even delight that seemed to come out of Cohen’s life of going nowhere, I began to think about how liberating it might be for any of us to practice sitting still — clearing our heads and quieting our emotions.

You could start just by taking a few minutes out of every day to sit quietly and do nothing, letting what moves you rise to the surface. You could enjoy a long walk in the wilderness, or take a few days out of every season to go on retreat, exploring what lies deeper within the moment or yourself.

You could, as Cohen was doing, try to find a life in which stage sets and performances disappear and be reminded, at a level deeper than all words, about how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions.

TAKE THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

The idea of going nowhere is as universal as the law of gravity. “All the unhappiness of men,” the 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal famously noted, “arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”

After Admiral Richard E. Byrd spent nearly five months alone in a shack in the Antarctic, in temperatures that sank to 70 degrees below zero, he emerged convinced that “half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

Or, as they sometimes say around Kyoto, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

Yet the world in which Pascal and even Admiral Byrd lived seems positively tranquil by today’s standards. The amount of data humanity collects while you’re reading a book is five times greater than the amount that exists in the entire Library of Congress. Anyone reading my full book, The Art of Stillness, will take in as much information today as Shakespeare took in during his lifetime. Researchers in the field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from a phone call. Yet such interruptions come every 11 minutes, on average — which means we’re never caught up with our lives.

So the more data that comes streaming in on us, the less time we have to process any of it.

The one thing technology doesn’t provide is a sense of how to make the best use of it. The ability to gather information, which used to be so crucial, is far less important now than the ability to sift through it.

It’s easy to feel as if you’re standing 2 inches away from a huge canvas that’s crowded and changing every microsecond. It’s only by stepping back and standing still that you can begin to take in the larger picture and see what that canvas — which is your life — really means.

UNPLUG AND RECHARGE

I’ve always been surprised to find that the people who have worked to speed up the world are often the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down.

One day I visited Library of Congress headquarters to give a talk on the Dalai Lama book I’d written and, like most visitors, I was impressed by the trampolines, the indoor tree houses, and the freedom that workers had to let their minds wander off leash to wherever inspiration might be hiding.

Many Silicon Valley employees observe an Internet Sabbath every week, turning off most of their devices from Friday night to Monday morning, if only to regain the sense of proportion and direction they’ll need when they go back online.

There is now a meditation room in every building on the General Mills campus in Minneapolis. Congressman Tim Ryan leads his colleagues in sessions of sitting still, reminding them that, if nothing else, scientists have found that meditation can lower blood pressure, help boost our immune systems, and even change the architecture of our brains.

A growing percentage of American companies now have stress-reduction programs, and the number is increasing by the day. More than 30 percent of those enrolled in such a program at Aetna, the giant healthcare company, saw their stress levels drop by a third after only an hour of yoga each week.

The computer-chip maker Intel experimented with a quiet period of four hours every Tuesday, during which 300 engineers and managers were asked to turn off their email and phones and put up Do Not Disturb signs on their office doors to make space for “thinking time.” The response proved so enthusiastic that the company inaugurated an eight-week program to encourage clearer thinking.

After a similar seven-week program at General Mills, 80 percent of senior executives reported an improvement in their ability to make decisions, and 89 percent said they had become better listeners. Such developments are saving American corporations $300 billion a year; more important, they’re a form of preemptive medicine at a time when the World Health Organization has projected that “stress will be the health epidemic of the 21st century.”

It may be strange to see mind training — going nowhere, in effect — being embraced by forward-pushing organizations. And it’s true, the businesses that view mindfulness practices as opportunities for advancing their goals may simply be deploying new and imaginative means to the same un-elevated ends: searching for ways to squeeze ever more productivity from their employees.

To me, the point of sitting still is to help you see through the very idea of pushing forward; it leads you to a place where you’re defined by something larger. Its benefits lie within some psychological account with a high interest rate but long-term yields, to be drawn upon at the moment when a doctor walks into the room shaking his head, or another car veers in front of yours, and all you have to draw upon is the clarity and focus you’ve collected in your deeper moments.

KEEP THE SABBATH

The one word for which the adjective “holy” is used in the Ten Commandments is “Sabbath.” But keeping the Sabbath — doing nothing for a while — is one of the hardest things in life for me. I’d much rather give up meat or wine or sex than the option of checking my emails or getting on with my work when I want to. If I don’t answer my messages today, I tell myself, there will only be more to answer tomorrow (though, in truth, refraining from sending messages will likely diminish the number I receive). If I take time off, I somehow believe, I’ll be that much more hurried when I return to work.

Whenever I finally force myself away from my desk for a day, of course, I find the opposite: The more time I spend away from my work, the better the work will be.

One day, Mahatma Gandhi was said to have woken up and told those around him, “This is going to be a very busy day. I won’t be able to meditate for an hour.” His friends were taken aback at this rare break from his discipline. “I’ll have to meditate for two,” he explained.

I mentioned this once on a radio program and a woman called in, understandably impatient. “It’s all very well for a male travel writer in Santa Barbara to talk about taking time off,” she said. “But what about me? I’m a mother trying to start a small business, and I don’t have the luxury of meditating for two hours a day.”

Yet it’s precisely those who are busiest, I wanted to tell her, who most need to give themselves a break. Stress is contagious. If the overburdened mother could ask her spouse — or her mother or a friend — to look after her kids for 30 minutes a day, I’m sure she’d be more relaxed and have more energy and joy to share with her children (and with her business) when she came back.

Space, as Karl Marx explained it in another context, has been annihilated by time. This is especially true today. We feel as though we can connect with anyone, almost anywhere, at any moment. And the more we contact others, the more it seems we lose contact with ourselves.

When I left New York City for the backstreets of Kyoto, I figured I’d be growing poorer in terms of money, amusements, social life, and obvious prospects, but I’d be richer in what I prize most: days and hours.

This is what the principle of the Sabbath enshrines. It is, as the great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, “a cathedral in time rather than in space.”

The one day a week we take off becomes a vast empty space through which we can wander, without agenda. It’s like a retreat house that ensures we’ll have something bright and purposeful to carry back into the other six days. The Sabbath reminds us that, in the end, all our journeys have to bring us home.

It takes courage, of course, to step out of the fray, just as it takes courage to do anything that’s necessary, whether it’s turning away from that sugarcoated doughnut or tending to a loved one on her deathbed. And with billions of our global neighbors in crying need, with so much in every life that has to be done, it can sound selfish to take a break or go off to a quiet place. But as soon as you sit still, you find that it actually brings you closer to others, in both understanding and sympathy.

In any case, few of us have the chance to step out of our daily lives often, or for very long. Nowhere can become somewhere we visit in the quiet corners of our lives by just sitting quietly for 30 minutes every morning (a mere 3 percent of our waking hours). The point of gathering stillness is not to enrich the sanctuary or mountaintop but to bring that calm into the motion and commotion of the world.

Because, in an age of speed, nothing can be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And, in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.

Do you suffer from heart burn, acid indigestion, or are being treated for Gerd, peptic ulcers or other digestive issues with a pharmaceutical product, or prescription? Then you need to know that you are very deficient in B12 levels.

This usually results in fatigue and leads to increased cardiovascular risk.

But, do not go out and start taking B12! And we know from other postings never to take a B 12 shot.

In order for your body to replace the B12 in your body, you need to take B Complex. Yes, B Complex!

Also, I have seen this too often, do not take any antacids, prescription or otherwise, if you want to get pregnant, or you are pregnant.

Call us for a personalized plan to get you off those antacids, and to uncover what the problem is and why you need to take them in the first place.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Slice the zucchini lengthwise, into ¼-inch-thick strips, getting 6 slices out of each zucchini. Spray the zucchini slices with olive oil coking spray and sprinkle with ½ teaspoon salt, ⅛ teaspoon black pepper and ½ teaspoon garlic powder. Grill the slices, in batches, 2-3 minutes on each side, or until golden and firm – not browned and crisp. Spread on clean kitchen towels to soak up more moisture.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat, about 3 minutes. Add the meat, the minced garlic, ½ teaspoon kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up the meat, until meat is browned, 5-7 minutes. Drain into a colander, then mix in a bowl with 1 cup marinara sauce.

In another bowl, with a fork, mix together the ricotta, eggs, basil, and the remaining salt and pepper.

Assemble the lasagna: Spread ⅓ cup of the marinara sauce on the bottom of a 9 X 13 baking dish; Top the marinara sauce with a layer of zucchini, then a third of the ricotta mixture, a third of the meat mixture, and a third of the mozzarella cheese; Repeat, arranging the zucchini slices in the opposite direction: zucchini, ⅓ ricotta, ⅓ meat mixture, ⅓ mozzarella; Repeat one last time, adding one extra layer of zucchini: zucchini, ricotta, meat mixture, more zucchini, and mozzarella.

Bake, uncovered, until the cheese is golden, about 30 minutes. You can finish by broiling for 2 minutes on high to brown the cheese, if you wish.

You take a typical medical doctor who goes through a decade of school. How many courses do they typically take in nutrition? The answer is at most one and it’s not really a course, it’s a one-day mini whatever you would call it: a two-hour sit down and they don’t even really go into nutrition. They go into the ways that certain vitamins affect your body, your enzymes, but that’s it. That’s it!

One of my good friends is a physician in San Antonio. He said that he went to school for 12 years. Twelve years! He had two literal hours on a Wednesday afternoon for nutrition and that’s it. So, the reason that your doctor does not tell you about the effects of nutrition on your health or about the effects of nutrition on cancer is that he or she doesn’t know it.

It’s also a great example of the astonishing disconnect that exists in the mainstream medical system. They think that your body is somehow disconnected from what you feed your body; which is astonishing, completely irrational, illogical and unscientific.

So, the good news is that it becomes very easy to start waking people up and to start educating people about what’s real in terms of nutrition and health. People can understand this. We live in a materialistic type of society, so if you start with a material metaphor or with a material explanation, you can make good progress in this.

You can say, “well look! What you eat and drink is digested, right? And it becomes your blood composition and your blood is made of what you eat and drink.” And people say that “yeah, I get that.” “Okay, great! Unless you think that your blood is made magically, which doesn’t happen.

So then, your blood circulates throughout your body. Your blood brings the materials that then become your organs, that fuels your brain. Your cognitive function that fuel the function of all of your organs, and that replenish and rebuild all the cells of your body. As you lose cells, you build new cells. You replace cells.”

That idea is not yet recognized by the entire system of modern medicine with all of its claimed advances and with all of the billions of dollars that have gone in the cancer-research industry. They still cannot yet grasp a simple concept that a five year old understands almost automatically.

Of course there are plenty of great guys out there, but I’ve also known some really bad guys in my time. I wouldn’t be leveling with you if I neglected to tell you about some guys who have a dark side. So how can you avoid the bad apples? Watch out for these five types:

The Hit ‘er-and-Quit ‘er

These guys are the ones who just don’t like women, yet they use women as often as possible. They still want sex, but their need for intimacy and female companionship ends at the foot of the bed. They will say virtually anything to get a girl naked and have no conscience about what lies and misrepresentations they tell to get there. They are predators and will move on, even if they like the woman. Watch out for men who try to pressure you into having sex with over-the-top urgency and get aggressive when you say no.

The Kiss-and-Teller

These are the braggarts who are more interested in a trophy for the sole purpose of having a story to tell. Unlike the previous guy, who may not even care about his image, these guys can’t wait to parade you around — and then get away from you, so they can tell their stories. Their only interest is meeting what they believe are society’s expectations. So they won’t try to get to know you at all. They just want to show you off and make people think that they have something, even if they don’t.

The Smother Brother

These guys are overwhelmed by a need for control. For example, they might tell a girlfriend how to dress, or where she is and is not allowed to go. Their problem is that they can’t deal with uncertainty, so they micromanage the life out of you and the relationship. At first, it might feel good that they are really head over heels in love with you and so invested in you. But be patient, because soon you might find that their interest is not in caring for you, but in controlling you. Don’t confuse smothering with love.

The Pretender

He is playing a script and he doesn’t care who is playing opposite him. He just likes his role of romantic lead, which he may eagerly play all the way up to the altar. But he has no intention of ever following through by sticking around to do the actual work. Once this guy feels he’s got you, it’s “game over” — now he has to figure out what to do with you. And that’s either too scary or too boring a proposition for him to deal with, so he moves on.

The Mama’s Boy

Unemployed and seeking women who are affluent to take care of them emotionally and financially, mama’s boys are looking to be — you guessed it — mommied. Instead of viewing relationships as their chance to grow into adulthood, they look at women as mothers who will feed, clothe and clean up after them. Watch out for guys who never seem to have any money, so they expect you to pay for dinner or even ask for loans.

Boy, oh boy, I can put some faces with each of these five categories! These guys are out there. Beware.

Please feel free to share with family and loved ones. Always remember to call with any questions you may have, or difficult situations, we have many professionals here to help.